Romans

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Receive + Communion with God
Read Romans 8:19-22
The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. For creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For creation was subjected to frustration…and creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the same freedom and glory as the children of God.

Spend some time in prayer giving God glory, honor, and thanks.

Relate + Community with others
What stuck with you from Sunday’s teaching? Why?

How do we commonly understand sin? How are these views helpful? How are they hurtful?
How do you ‘see’ sin?

What do you think of the idea that Jesus’s gift of life is given for everyone (and everything)?
What about that idea is hard to accept? Does it change anything for how you see people and the world?

Have you ever experienced life in Christ presented as a line in the sand? How did that make you feel (positively and/or negatively)?

What does the statement “Jesus is into Reality” mean to you? How is possible to ignore Reality?
How is it possible to join Reality?

Have you known people who live in a way that does not correspond to Reality?
What does that look like?

How does the metaphor of Christ like the sun work for you?

Are there times when you sense that Christ has already won the war?
When is this reality least felt in your life?

More Romans passages to reflect upon:
Romans 5:18-19  
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.

Romans 8:19-22
The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  
For creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For creation was subjected to frustration…and creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the same freedom and glory as the children of God.

Romans 5:15-16  
The rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift.

Romans 8:1-3
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

Respond + Commission to action
Read Romans. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1&version=NIV

Download the YouVersion Bible App if you have a smartphone. Read Romans, or have the App read it to you!

Find one practical thing you can do this week that you would never do if you did not have confidence in God. Do one thing that makes no sense unless God is real and Jesus is raised. Do it. Then share that with someone.
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